Came back to Whiterun after about two months 'in game' to find Lydia still there, sitting in a chair, waiting for me and the wife to come back to our 'first home'.

I think I am playing this game a bit too much that I felt guilty for leaving her alone in that house with the armor, weapons and treasures we once found together, without so much as writing her a letter or popping in when I was going to the smith and other traders.

"Oh, Lydia, hello! Yes, we're just stopping in for .... Lydia, Lydia why are you looking at me like that? Lydia, why are you ... are you crying?"

When I come in out of the rain after a long day(or ten) of getting mauled by bears and catching bear diseases from bears mauling me, I want to relax. And that's hard to do when she's always there sitting in the shadowy corner of my bedroom. And staring at me.

I need to buy a new house and just not give her the address.

Fourth character, an orc, and I'm finally running into racist bandits for the first time. I don't get it, but they never yelled out "Your kind don't belong here." or "Skyrim is for the Nords!" towards my Redguard, Breton, or other Orc. Eh, I made this new character to go straight-up Empire-supporter anyway, so that just makes it easier.

Have to admit, the seeming increased instability that comes with exploring more and more of the world and thus increasing the size of your saves is part of what's making these new characters happen. Dammit, Bethesda...you don't have to save every single Wooden Plate's position.

I haven't noticed any instability in the saves. Then again I have most of my "fade" sliders set fairly low because of the lack of RAM under XP 32-bit. Body cleanup is fairly quick. The biggest and latest is 13.6 MB.

Well unless you count Alduin's magical teleportation to the horizon in a quick save during...

Spoiler:

my fight with him at the Throat of the World.

Mikaze, it's likely because you've gone full Empire supporter in your interactions with people that's causing that. I started trying to be neutral with my first Breton and then shifted stances part way through and started getting the same sassing. I'm sure "Empire/Stormcloak" support gets tracked just like many other stats for NPC dialog tree uses. Likely based on the number of time's you've asked people if they support one group or the other and the resulting choices.

Next character I make is likely going to be a Khajiit affiliated Stormcloak assassin.

When I come in out of the rain after a long day(or ten) of getting mauled by bears and catching bear diseases from bears mauling me, I want to relax. And that's hard to do when she's always there sitting in the shadowy corner of my bedroom. And staring at me.

I need to buy a new house and just not give her the address.

She actually doeesn't if you look there fast enough once you get up, you can see her entering the room and sitting down. She has just some sort of creepy inner alarm clock...

An there I was reading this board, with my level 35 character, thinking "Lydia, who is Lydia?" Then I remembered the ten minutes I spent with her before encountering my first giant and saying to myself "Well, ok, anyway I prefer to solo this game"

"When will the authorities of Tamriel learn: if you lock people up for minor adventuring related crimes, they'll just be surrounded by other adventurers and be more likely to adventure again when they get out!"
-- Yahtzee, Zero Punctuation Skyrim review

A quote that has inspired me to possibly start my next campaign with everyone in the party on a chain gang.

Just got this as a (stunningly generous) early Christmas gift from my friend and am watching my productivity at home plummet. I'm playing a Nord, but part of me is wondering if I wouldn't be better off starting over as an Orc. That Berserker Rage seems like such a great power.

Just got this as a (stunningly generous) early Christmas gift from my friend and am watching my productivity at home plummet. I'm playing a Nord, but part of me is wondering if I wouldn't be better off starting over as an Orc. That Berserker Rage seems like such a great power.

I'm currently playing an orc named Kua. ;-) The berserk rage is really handy, it's pulled me through a couple situations already. Just make sure you keep it in the favorites list and not assigned to the button. It really sucks to waste a once per day ability accidentally.

So I started toon 2 at long last. A now level 7 Khajiit thief, bounty hunter, and all around sneak. I totally got used to playing on Master where even a lone wolf and be a deadly encounter until level 15 or so, I feel like an untouchable god in light armor and dual daggers on Adept.

I wish there was instant replay baked into the game as an option becaus I just slaughtered 3 wolves in nearly one full dual dagger flurry. Man that felt good.

As an aside to that I'm going to try using dual daggers in the x15 damage sneak attack perk. Doing the Left/Right combo attack and see if it gets better results. The normal x6 seems to do so on "sleeping" undead.

FINALLY leveled my Smithing to Maximum at level 40. Dragon Plate and Scale armor acquired, now to get rid of this ton of Dragon pieces littering my Whiterun Storehouse.....

Malacath's TEETH this stuff looks awesome. My only complaint is the back of the legs of the Dragonbone Plate Armor is that the defenses there are ... what looks like two thigh-bones from a Halfing on my thighs and some manky-looking fur on the back of my calves.

That said, with Smithing 100 and my Heavy Armor Skill maxed out, nothing short of an Archmage or a Dragon is a threat to me anymore. Kinda ... sad, but standing there punching things to death as their daedric weapons just bounce right off me is still incredibly hilarious.

FINALLY leveled my Smithing to Maximum at level 40. Dragon Plate and Scale armor acquired, now to get rid of this ton of Dragon pieces littering my Whiterun Storehouse.....

Malacath's TEETH this stuff looks awesome. My only complaint is the back of the legs of the Dragonbone Plate Armor is that the defenses there are ... what looks like two thigh-bones from a Halfing on my thighs and some manky-looking fur on the back of my calves.

That said, with Smithing 100 and my Heavy Armor Skill maxed out, nothing short of an Archmage or a Dragon is a threat to me anymore. Kinda ... sad, but standing there punching things to death as their daedric weapons just bounce right off me is still incredibly hilarious.

I will actually go and double-check that. I have both a Legendary set of both sets of Heavy Armors and see which is statistically better.

Personally just went for the Dragonplate simply because [boop] YEAH, DRAGON PLATE! ..... That, and I had over a hundred pieces each of Dragon Bone and Dragon Scales lying about in my Whiterun Storehouse.

Edit: No, you are correct. Daedric Armor at (Legendary) level has around 20 points of armor bonus on a character with both the Matching Set and Well Fitted perks (25% bonus to Armor bonus for each perk) and 4/5 perks in Juggernaut.

Also, while Badass in both stats and appearance, I can't help but feel like a Paladin in Unholy Full Plate wandering around in that stuff...

I will actually go and double-check that. I have both a Legendary set of both sets of Heavy Armors and see which is statistically better.

Personally just went for the Dragonplate simply because [boop] YEAH, DRAGON PLATE! ..... That, and I had over a hundred pieces each of Dragon Bone and Dragon Scales lying about in my Whiterun Storehouse.

Edit: No, you are correct. Daedric Armor at (Legendary) level has around 20 points of armor bonus on a character with both the Matching Set and Well Fitted perks (25% bonus to Armor bonus for each perk) and 4/5 perks in Juggernaut.

Also, while Badass in both stats and appearance, I can't help but feel like a Paladin in Unholy Full Plate wandering around in that stuff...

I believe (working from memory) the top AC is w/ Heavy Armor, at 567 pts. Whatever the actual #, it equates to 85% resistance to physical damage. Just like you can't get better than 85% magic resistance in the game.

W/ that in mind, around a 20 point differential is not that meaningful. Go for whatever feels right for your character. I'm w/ you on the Daedric = Anti-paladin badass, though. I have it on Mjoll, my follower. The only thing I don't like about it is her face is obscured.

One thing I do dislike with the Game is that the Civil war is over so quickly! (mind you, running through as a level 40 Orc with maxed out heavy armor, two-handed tree legendary Dragonbone armor and Daedric Warhammer and everything enchanted to the nines.....)

Barricade? psssh. Guards? milk-drinkers. Military Governer? Accidentally Fus Doh Rah'd him right into Ulfric's crotch, which was mildly hilarious, although the future High King is giving me dirty looks now.

I was hoping for a 'campaign' where you would have to stick to it and fight constantly for in-game weeks! Instead it's oh hey sprint through here and kill that one NPC, then go liberate a fort held by milkdrinkers, go bribe this guy, the repeat the first two steps a couple more times and WOO VICTORY PARTY!

I was expecting once we took the first city, we'd be facing Imperial legions marching on us, having to go free farms and towns being held by the Legions as supply points and I was also hoping I would get the chance to equip all the Stormcloaks prior to/during the fight. Put away that tired old militia armor boys, I've got enchanted glass armor and weapons for everyone ..... wait what do you mean no? Enchanted. Glass. Armor. Get over here.

Of course, now instead of being a subtle theme for the Stormcloaks, the racism present within their organisation is grabbing me by the collar and screaming in my face. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.....

, the racism present within their organisation is grabbing me by the collar and screaming in my face.

Ya felt the same way on my first character. She stayed out of it mostly until she found out some things about Ulfric (see past spoilers). Personally I can sympathize with the overall aims of more or less not wanting to bend the knee to the Thalmor (which would be the only real reason to rebel against the Empire)

By the time she was full engaged in the war she really could have take out all the Stormcloak held keeps basically on her own. The Legion general soldiery were just getting in the way. Maybe this is an area for an enterprising modder to go in and make some tweaks. I really wonder how far the AI engine can be pushed to create larger scale battles. You get a taste of it in...

Spoiler:

the attack on Whiterun, especially if you are the defender. And in the various raids...

but I can't help but feel there may be ways to improve those live cinematics as it were. Getting things like Restoration specialists, and more unit tactics rather then just mad rushing around of AIs.

I'd be totally down for upgrading armor and weapons, improve stocks of potions, etc. Really embrace the "legendary smith" angle they introduced with the Enchantment and Smithing skills. Also an expanded war mod would be fun. There has to be a way to achieve that with the Creation Kit come some time January or February. The core of it would be mucking with NPC inventories from a master list of "available" stock. Maybe build some kind of repeatable quest system to supply such items.

Of course Legion and Stormcloaks would be would be split Heavy/Light armor. Heavy Armor track for Imperials, Light armor track for Stormcloaks... as I noticed their base armor splits that way typically.

Camping my Orsinian Wrecking Ball at level 45 for a short while to roll up a Dark Elf Rogue (Illusion Magic, Light Armor, Lockpick, One-handed, Stealth, Alchemy and level up Conjuration, Enchanting and Smithing as side-skills) and play the Imperial Side of this equation.

Dear God I HATE Ancient Dragons, because currently the sods only turn up at undefended towns where the damn level 1 villagers with iron daggers run up and try to attack it when the Dragon strafes them.

My load button is going to need replacing sooner rather than later, although the entire keyboard is suffering from repeated slams from my face.

I will note something odd.... if you don't want to deal with Dragons while doing lots of side quests and exploring, simply don't talk to the Jarl of Whiterun about the dragon attack. Basically stop the main plot as soon as you leave Helgan. With my Khajiit thief I've already done the Thieves Guild quest, will be starting the Dark Brotherhood soon, and likely side with the Stormcloaks for kicks, all without seeing a dragon beyond the first one.

When I come in out of the rain after a long day(or ten) of getting mauled by bears and catching bear diseases from bears mauling me, I want to relax. And that's hard to do when she's always there sitting in the shadowy corner of my bedroom. And staring at me.

I need to buy a new house and just not give her the address.

I've been a werewolf since my first week of the game, I don't even know what the bonuses for sleeping are...

I will note something odd.... if you don't want to deal with Dragons while doing lots of side quests and exploring, simply don't talk to the Jarl of Whiterun about the dragon attack. Basically stop the main plot as soon as you leave Helgan. With my Khajiit thief I've already done the Thieves Guild quest, will be starting the Dark Brotherhood soon, and likely side with the Stormcloaks for kicks, all without seeing a dragon beyond the first one.

** spoiler omitted **

That's a viable choice to be sure, but for me, one of the pleasures of this game is using the Dragon Shouts. No dragons, no dragon shouts essentially.

Also, unlike, say, Oblivion, I think the main quest rewards you more for doing it sooner rather than later. It's also broken into thirds, so you can pace yourself. I did the 1st 3rd early and then waited very late in the game to resume. I won't do that for my 2nd playthrough.

All that said, there comes a time when you're just sick and tired of endless dragon attacks. Certain areas get attacked more than others. College of Winterhold waaay too much for my taste.

You might try entering a building and waiting a number of hours. I tried this once and the dragon was gone when I re-exited.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand after conquering Solitude, I'm wandering around and I see Ulfric and his second-in-command walking back to Windhelm when an Ancient Dragon comes swooping in.

I stand there, draw my bow, thinking "This is going to be AWESOME!", the Dragon strafes, we're all relatively healthy, we've got it down to 50% health, it dives into the crash animation and then takes Ulfric with it as it skids along the ground and then sails off the cliff edge like a giant football filled with pain.

I'm standing there going ".........................." and Ulfric's second (WHY can I not remember his name?) just casually goes back to the road and starts walking again.

Could not find either the Dragon or Ulfric after that, and I went straight down the Mountainside in pursuit (or at least to see if Ulfric's unique armor was lootable >_>) but could not find either one, dead or alive. I must have spent close to an hour scouring the countryside around Yorgrim Overlook without so much as a hint.

Hilarity is watching a pair of Brown Dragons headbutt each other mid-air and then spend the next five minutes flying around trying to strafe each other.

Then they both landed and started spamming their breaths at each other. I'm sitting there with bow in hand, patiently waiting for them to remember I'm there, and then the two Draconic Imbeciles get up close and personal.

It's a bad day for Dragonslayers everywhere when you kill a Dragon not because it has ravished the Princess or carried off a few sheep, but because its eyes are too close together...

I haven't noticed any instability in the saves. Then again I have most of my "fade" sliders set fairly low because of the lack of RAM under XP 32-bit. Body cleanup is fairly quick. The biggest and latest is 13.6 MB.

I believe the save-size issue is only critical on PS3, and annoying on X-Box 360 (on PS3 they start affecting that game at around 80 hours, while for 360 it's about 200 hours). On PC it shouldn't ever crop up, especially since the latest patch removed the 2 GB memory limitation.

Skyrim is truly an upgrade from Oblivion. Things have been watered down tho for convenience. Conversations shortened, quicker access to menues, better graphics and sound, and skills are different. The game so far has some great settings and interesting levels. You don't have to rest anymore to get your health back.

*Catches up on HalfOrcHeavyMetal's comments and giggles madly for few minutes*

See, this is why I really do want an inbuilt recording system to game. Even keeping it rolling for just a few minutes of archived view would be lovely. Because it doesn't ALT-Tab cleanly I can't bring any 3rd party based video recording software to bear in a decent way. Plus often the funny thing has already happened.

Hilarity is when you run around for around 20 levels before even touching the 'main' quest, go in to kill that Draugr and think "this be hella easy" then that MOTHERLESS UNDEAD SON OF A BADGER SHOUTS MY WEAPONS AWAY?

I spent close to a thousand gold coins on each of those steel daggers, skyforged steel no less, stealing the damn Grand Soulgems, paying the damn fines, I finally have my (equivilent) +2 Flaming Daggers and then "RAAAAAAGH" from the Walking Jerky and I spend close to an hour running around with a torch going "Where are they, dammit!"

Been playing for some weeks now. I joined the Companions, and I must say that first dungeon adventure from them is quite epic. Amazing dungeons, and atmosphere. Search every corner of Skyrim's dungeons there is stuff hidden everywhere in this game. Sell everything you can to make money.

Got it for Christimas. It's awesome.
My funny story? A dragon (blood I think) tried to attack me. At the College. I just watched as four mages shot every spell they knew at him. Didn't even have to twitch a control, the thing died everybody got impressed that I could absorba dragonsoul, then promptly forgot about it and now there is a dragon skeleton decorating the fountain. My contribution to the college department of anatomy. It even managed to land facing the doors to the hall of elements.
I also have one rage moment to share. I once fast traveled to the atronarch stone, which is near two dragon marks on the map. I was expecting to be attacked by a dragon in the area, even a frost dragon. What I wasn't expecting was a frost dragon AND TWO BLOOD DRAGONS AT THE SAME TIME. And all the critters wanted I piece of me too. AND, it doesn't end there, there was a fort nearby filled with bandits. Who decided to come out and see what is going and decided it was obviously my fault. And when I died my savefile started right there with three dragons flying around. I tried fighting, that did not go well. I tried running, found a giant camp, then giants strarted chasing me too. I tried begging for mercy. I had to go back to an earlier save. I still avoid that area out of sheer trauma. Talk about unwinnable scenarios.

Ran into the Old Orc again, looking for a good death as usual. Playing another Orc, felt obligated to give it to him. Freaking dragon attacks us in the middle of our fight. Damn thing does a fly-by and then tries to land on top of us. Both of us tear into the thing and as it swipes and bites back. Then a damn bear rumbles into our moving battle, first attacking Old Orc and then me after I took a swing at him. I can't even see Old Orc anymore because I've got a face full of BEAR and that dragon is still thrashing around next to it. Moment I kill the bear, the dragon keels over and reveals Old Orc, still alive with some decent health left. So we immediately continue where we left off.

Dude is going to be rubbing his death in other dead orc's faces for eons. His last words being the "GOOD ENOUGH!" line just made it that much more awesome.

Also, that damn dead dragon in Whiterun is STILL there and I know it's intentionally trolling the citizens there. Different pose each time, and the jerkass manages to get himself tangled up in the covered walks at the city gates. He's doing this on purpose, I just know it.

And playing on my third character, a Mage/Swordsman Nord, I find the Hilarity that I can spam Doublecast Firebolt and just own the game on a stick.

For bonus points, Doublecast a Fireball into a Dragon's face just as they are about to breath. It's hilarious. Not only does it completely stop their attack, but they flail about like they are having an epileptic fit, and thus all your cohorts can blast away like there is no tomorrow and ACTUALLY HIT SOMETHING FOR ONCE!

I love the first part of that trailer so much, that I had a hard time paying attention to the subtitles, but when that song started, it was hilarious.

Hi all, I finally got this game, and I have a question about combat on the PC: The manual says to "tap" the left mouse button for a basic melee attack, and "hold down" the same button for a power attack. I find that just tapping the mouse button doesn't do anything, although deliberately holding it down will cause a power attack. If I hold the mouse button down long enough, there is a sweet spot where I can release the button for it to be a basic attack and before it turns into a power attack. Does anyone else experience this?

Its not a "tap" quick click. You it's a decent click. There is also a bit of an animation delay to the attacks so it's not 1:1. The weapons have thier own swing speed which is often quote slower then the mouse. Try using some daggers to get the feel of it. Then a two-hand weapons and "feel" that difference.

This is, of course, to showcase the alliance between Valve and Bethesda which means that full mod support will be given to SKYRIM within the Steam menu system, meaning that regular users can add, remove and use mods with a minimum of fuss. As an extra bonus, the new update also adds totally sweet high-res textures to the PC version of the game, as well as the construction kit so you can create your own mods really easily.

*drools* Creation kit. Looks good, the introduction tutorial video doesn't seem to bad. Scripting is likely going to trip lots of would be modders up but the basics of building environments don't seem to horrendous.

I wonder how this is going to interact with the folks at SkyNexus. They have a number of mods out already and the NexusMod manager. Hopefully this means Dovvakins hideout will get a swift boost in functionality. It's awesome as is, but

High res will have to wait until the consumer beta of Windows 8 so I can actually get full use of 6 gigs of RAM.

I feel bad for the folks on Xbox as chances are coming up on 0 that Microsoft will ever let mods through. Sony... who knows with them as they've let the Steam layer run but... who knows if they'll let mods in. I wonder if, much like Valve does, Bethesda will eventually pay off some of the modders to offer a "Best of Mods" DLC which they'll then run through a bit of interal testing for release to console versions. That would seem the way to keep almost everyone content.

I'm surprised it's taken this long for DLC to be announced for the game, but I'll get back into the game when it is released. My character was so uberstrong when I stopped playing, I expected the DLC to be easy to get through. I haven't played since December when I completed the main story and eventually got all the achievements.

Anyone playing the 360 version and tried the Kinect support with the voice commands? I thought that looked pretty neat, actually.

The Kinect support is cool because you can use any dragon shout you have on the favorites menu, and it does introduce new ways to sort inventory that are only available to Kinect users.

Also, you can say "Ally Trade" and you don't have to go through your ally's conversation every time you want to open their inventory.

The ability to equip weapons and spells is OK. It's all just assigning key phrases. So to equip the shield and dagger (I play a sneak), first I have to assign the phrase "dagger" to a weapon with "assign dagger" and assign the phrase "shield" to a shield with "assign shield," then I can say "Equip dagger and shield" and it will equip them both. It's not picky though, you can assign any of the assign phrases to pretty much anything. I have assigned "bound weapon" to the Bound Sword spell but I assigned "bow" to my Bound Bow spell. I was trying to assign "Cold spell" to my Ice Spike and it assigned it as "Calm spell" instead because there is no "cold spell" phrase, the phrase for that is "frost spell."

The most annoying thing about the Kinect support is that it has trouble differentiating from when the player is speaking and when an NPC is saying dialogue because the Dragonborn is nearby. The Kinect doesn't listen during actual conversations, so forget saying what your character would say in a conversation like Mass Effect 3 does. It does listen when you're not in a conversation though, so four different times so far when an NPC has said something like "Watch yourself at night, it's not safe" the game has spontaneously popped up with "Saving Game...." because it thought I said "New Save" or whatever the phrase is.

The Kinect feature is disabled by default after the update and has to be turned on in the game options. Because it changes the game controls slightly, it resets the control to the (new) default configuration so, after turning on Kinect support, I had to go remap my control. (I have RB and LB swapped because I don't like holding sprint and indicating direction both left-handed.) With the Kinect enabled, it automatically listens for Shout names (that are on the favorite list) that are spoken in English, but if you want to say them in the "dragon tongue," you have to hold in the shout button while you speak them.

All-in-all, I do like the Kinect support, but the fact that it hears the NPCs and thinks they're me is annoying, and I have to occasionally go and delete erroneous save games it created.

Relatively new to Skyrim. I am an old PC gamer that wanted to play Dragon Age on a console instead of the PC. So my wife gave me an XBOX 360 for Christmas with Dragon Age I and II, Fable III and Skyrim. (She went a bit overboard. But I like it :)) I played DA I and II and liked them. Mostly liked Fable III. Then started playing Skyrim a few weeks ago (long story why it took so long to get around to it.) Unbelievable! Best of the lot. What an absolutely vast game. I have never seen anything like it. Is there anything else out there like it?

Skyrim quickly became my favorite game ever. The virtual world is just amazing. If I had a complaint it would be that the interplay with your companions could be more robust. Dragon Age II was over the top good at this, but Skyrim has DAII beat in every other way.

Bethesda's other games, for a start :-) - OBLIVION is SKYRIM's predecessor in the ELDER SCROLLS series and is also available on X-Box 360. It's a lot flakier than SKYRIM in a lot of ways, but is decent.

There's also FALLOUT 3, which is post-apocalyptic SF so with more emphasis on shooting than hand-to-hand combat, but the game is very similar structurally to SKYRIM. FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS, the follow-up to it, is for my money is better than SKYRIM, mainly because there's a lot more companion interplay and the plot is a much more open and customisable (you have more choices over what to do).

Outside of them there's not a huge amount out there. Something like GRAND THEFT AUTO 4 is similarly open-world, but there's not a huge amount to do outside the missions. The MASS EFFECT series is a very strong SF RPG trilogy (from the same people who made DRAGON AGE), but is much more linear.

Relatively new to Skyrim. I am an old PC gamer that wanted to play Dragon Age on a console instead of the PC. So my wife gave me an XBOX 360 for Christmas with Dragon Age I and II, Fable III and Skyrim. (She went a bit overboard. But I like it :)) I played DA I and II and liked them. Mostly liked Fable III. Then started playing Skyrim a few weeks ago (long story why it took so long to get around to it.) Unbelievable! Best of the lot. What an absolutely vast game. I have never seen anything like it. Is there anything else out there like it?

Skyrim quickly became my favorite game ever. The virtual world is just amazing. If I had a complaint it would be that the interplay with your companions could be more robust. Dragon Age II was over the top good at this, but Skyrim has DAII beat in every other way.

Later,

Mazra

Starting with the second installment, the Elder Scrolls series focuses on open world gameplay and freedom of choice. Morrowind (third game) formed the framework that Oblivion (fourth game) and Skyrim are built on. I simply can't go backwards to previous games thanks to the improvements made in Skyrim. I've seen other games try offer similar features, but few come close and none surpass.